


Life Day

by depizan



Series: Hands of Chance [6]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Holiday, cross-faction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 20:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13151565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depizan/pseuds/depizan
Summary: Jezari and Kyrian celebrate Life Day on Tatooine, sometime not too long after he joins her crew.





	Life Day

Tatooine wasn’t high on Jezari’s list of planets to spend Life Day on, but holidays came second to credits when you had a crew to feed. And, in this case, credits had meant a delivery to a settlement so tiny their landing pad was a fused circle of sand just big enough for the _Luck._

The huddle of sandy buildings consisted of one cantina (doing double-duty as the town hall), several houses, and a repair shop run by an elderly Sullustan. How the town had afforded the delivery of parts and food, Jezari didn’t know. And didn’t want to know. Tatooine was one of those planets where it was best not to ask too many questions.

A sandcrawler was parked perhaps half a kilometer further down the spine of rocks that protected the town from the worst of the desert winds - close enough to attract townspeople who wanted to buy something, and far enough that the Jawas could _claim_ not to know anything about anything that went missing while they were there. It and the lights and tinny music of the cantina were the only signs that the town wasn’t abandoned.

Jezari retreated into the lingering cool of her ship. It seemed just as oddly empty as the town. Risha had rented the repair shop’s speeder for some mysterious errand, Corso and Bowdaar had gone to check out the cantina, and Kyrian… had slipped away at some point.

She knocked on his cabin door. No answer.

_Great._

There was no reason to worry. He was an adult. It wasn’t as if he could get lost in the middle of the Tatooine desert; there was nowhere to go.

Never mind that the Tatooine desert was full of angry natives, desperate criminals, and uncharted Imperial outposts.

_Even he wouldn’t just go for a stroll in the desert. Nobody does that._ He’d gone off with Corso and Bowdaar, that was the only sensible explanation.

They’d divvied up the credits, Risha had rented the speeder, she’d stayed a moment to reassure the Sullustan that Risha was absolutely reliable and wouldn’t wreck, lose, or steal the speeder… She hadn’t really paid attention to what Corso had said beyond “cantina” and “Bowdaar.” Of course he’d gone with them.

Jezari stopped in the middle of her third circuit of the ship and rubbed her forehead. _I’m an idiot._ She’d join them at the cantina and pretend the menu wasn’t really “10 things to do with a dead womp rat.” It was better than pacing the _Luck_ and getting worked up over nothing.

 

Kyrian hadn’t gone to the cantina. She met him coming up the ship’s ramp. He was carrying a large, rather battered metal box. It looked as if it had fallen off the back of a speeder. Repeatedly.

“Where- What is that?”

“Ah.” He looked at the box as if it had just appeared in his hands. “It’s for you, actually.”

She stared at him.

“I _think_ Bowdaar said it was Life Day,” he added. “Republic holiday? Gift giving?” He sounded uncertain. “I thought you’d gone to the cantina with the others.”

“No. I mean, yes it’s Life Day. Cantina food on Tatooine is _awful_.” She was babbling. “Here. That looks heavy.” She took the box before he could object.

It didn’t look heavy, and wasn’t, but he’d been shifting it more and more to his left side as they’d stood there. She hadn’t been about to say _that_ , though. She set it on the acceleration couch in the lounge.

“It’s for your jewelry making,” Kyrian said. “I thought the Jawas might have interesting… parts.” He waved at the box. “Though I didn’t intend to get this much. I’m not sure if they wanted to make sure I got my credits’ worth, or if they wanted to offload as much as possible before I came to my senses.”

She pried the top off. The box was about two-thirds full of a dazzling array of circuit board fragments, gears, archaic bulbs, tiny crystals, slivers of wiring, and odd and unidentifiable bits of metal and glass. Junk even Jawas couldn’t sell, but with time and tools and jeweler’s wire…

“It’s too strange, isn’t it,” Kyrian said. “I’m sorry. I-”

“It’s wonderful! Thank you.” She hugged him. “If you wore jewelry, I’d make you something. Oh. Your present! Hang on.”

It took her no time at all to retrieve the half-bubble ship’s terrarium she’d picked up on Nar Shaddaa. A tiny garden of moss and ferns grew on dark earth under a clear dome, the whole thing held aloft by a miniature repulsor.

“I know you like nature,” she said, “and I saw you looking at these…”

“Thank you!” His smile lit his face.

She grinned. “I should get you a whole forest.”

“I don’t think that would fit on the ship.”

“A _tiny_ forest? Okay, maybe not, but if this works out,” she tapped the terrarium’s dome, “we could get a couple more for out here. Bigger ones.”

“I’d like that.”

 

Her crew properly accounted for, Jezari had no intention of subjecting her taste buds to the local cantina’s idea of “food.” The ready meals she stocked the _Luck_ ’s galley with weren’t exactly the height of cuisine, either, but they were at least edible.

She and Kyrian took a couple of cushions from the lounge and pushed a cargo pallet out onto the landing pad for an improvised picnic dinner. Tatooine might be hot, sandy, and generally none-too-hospitable, but it did have lovely sunsets.

She’d even collected a bottle of wine from the _Luck_ ’s rather limited stores. So it was as cheap as the ready meals, at least it tasted good.

They clinked glasses.

“Happy Life Day.”


End file.
